5 Changes that WWE have been forced to make since AEW's launch

#4 Going to great lengths to promote the WWE brand as the best in the industry

WWE has a very deliberate motive behind promoting "The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever"

As mentioned in the previous slide, WWE has enjoyed a near-monopoly over the professional wrestling industry for much of the last 20 years.

Of course, during that same time period, social media's popularity has exploded. WWE, as the market leader, naturally put its stamp on the vast majority of wrestling-related results on search engines.

The upshot of this is that if anyone searched for "Who is the best wrestler ever?", or "What is the best wrestling match ever?", then they would previously have, almost certainly, got a WWE-based answer.

Even in the event that a search produced a WCW-related result, then WWE would still have profited. A result such as Ric Flair being the best wrestler ever, or Rey Mysterio vs. Eddie Guerrero from WCW Halloween Havoc 1997 being the best match ever, is a win for WWE - as they now own the rights to all WCW footage.

This, obviously, is not the case where AEW is concerned. At the AEW Revolution pay-per-view earlier this year, The Young Bucks had an awesome bout with Kenny Omega and Adam "Hangman" Page. Some observers online called the bout the greatest tag team match they had ever seen.

Dave Meltzer gave the AEW tag team championship match at AEW Revolution a scale-breaking 6-star rating. This is the 4th 6-star match rating Kenny Omega has earned from Meltzer -- outside the 7-star match with Kazuichika Okada in 2018. Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/j2ZqXN6Ql8

— Just Alyx (@Vx1AlyxsWorld) March 6, 2020

Aware of the level of talent that call AEW home, WWE have recently moved to try and strengthen their search engine dominance. A big part of this strategy is their promotion of Edge Vs Randy Orton at Backlash 2020 as the "Greatest Wrestling Match Ever".

WWE clearly has confidence that Edge and Orton can deliver a great match at Backlash, but few genuinely expect the match to be the best of all time. The true purpose of the tagline, reportedly, is to make sure that whenever a fan searches for the "Greatest Wrestling Match Ever", they are directed to Edge Vs. Orton - instead of, for example, an AEW match.

This sort of tactic is something that WWE, even a year ago, would not have considered necessary. It is a mark of AEW's impact in the wrestling industry that WWE are pushing the Edge Vs Orton match so hard.